Day 53 A Disturbed Minority

Well, a reader corrected me recently on my use of slang. I referred to the heft on my torso as “meat flaps” when I should have used the term “bat wings.”

Whatever. To-may-to, to-mah-to, right?

Not so much, according to the Urban Dictionary. “Meat flaps”, I’m told, might be confused with “meat curtains” or “beef curtains” or a few other terms, all of which refer to “pendulous external female genitalia.” Urban Dictionary goes on to illustrate the usage as follows: “So, I was doing this slut the other day, and her beef curtains were hanging almost to her knees.”

Am I the only one that finds this sentence incredibly offensive?

Don’t get me wrong, the definition creates a funny visual. Having put myself through college working in a nursing home, I can assure you, there’s some truth to it. And it’s not just women; time and gravity is even harsher on elderly scrotums. And, while I’m on the subject, there’s nothing like bathing a dementia patient happily sporting a full-grown erection. Or, a Parkinson’s patient with unimpaired mental facilities, weeping with humiliation in the same situation.

I got quite the education, while getting my education. There’s humor and pathos in the human condition.

But back to Urban Dictionary. Some of it is hilarious. For instance: “hangry:” so hungry you’re angry, or “Dutch oven:” when your mate traps your head under the covers after releasing a particularly vile stench, or “paper GPS:” any non-electronic format for finding directions.

These are great. Unlike the beef curtain comment.

I think what bugs me is that it illustrates a pervasive attitude toward sex, reducing what can be an act of intimacy to an impersonal exchange that’s less, and worse, than casual. There’s an anonymous brutality that disturbs me, partly because so few people see it.

“It’s a joke,” people say. “Don’t be a prude.” Okay, but the “slut” is someone’s daughter, even if she’s just a placeholder in a joke. And the guy “doing” her is a man who’s learned to treat his “dates” as service providers at best, and interchangeable objects – pieces of “meat” – at worst. And the more we accept things like this, laugh at them, the more we normalize them.

Most people with similar sensitivities to mine just avoid this kind of content, or they laugh at the visual and leave it at that. But, perhaps because of the recent, horrifying trial of the two teenagers in Victoria, sentenced as adults in the sexual torture and murder of Kimberly Proctor, it hit a nerve with me. If this is the sort of culture our young people are immersed in, no wonder we’ve got monsters like Cameron Moffatt and Kruse Wellwood among us.

And yes, I know I tend to over-think things. But I’m not apologizing. Somebody’s got to do it.